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Giving their school menu a failing grade

Healthier lunches bring turned-up noses in Billerica

By Evan Lips, elips@lowellsun.com

Updated:
12/08/2012 02:51:35 PM EST

BILLERICA -- There aren't many fans of the new, healthier public-school lunches introduced to students this fall as part of a new federal standard, according to Marshall Middle School eighth-graders Alicia DeSousa and Angela Kobylinska.

After September's first week, the friends decided to do something about it.

Angela suggested drafting a petition. Nearly three months later, their petition has more than 500 signatures from classmates.

They planned to deliver the petition to Principal Roland Boucher this week.

"I remember the first day of school, I saw the portions were so much smaller than last year," Alicia said Thursday.

Students pay $2.50 for lunch. The new federal standards require them to take at least one serving of produce. Angela said she remembers the days when she received an apple.

"They make us eat fruit but I couldn't eat the apple because of my braces," she said. "I wasn't thrilled."

Angela wrote the petition. On Thursday she read it over the phone. It included statements such as "today's lunch made me hungry" and "some of the food students don't want so they throw it out."

The petition calls for reducing the cost to $1.50 and boosting the portions. Angela's argument is that for $2.50 every day, the average person could buy a week's worth of better lunches from the supermarket.

Both students said the lunch lines in the cafeteria aren't as long as they were last year, with more classmates opting to brown-bag it.

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Superintendent of Schools Tim Piwowar said Thursday he hasn't heard about the girls' petition, but added that he has heard grumblings about the new lunches.

"The only thing we did was adapt to the new state and federal regulations," he said.

Piwowar said he's heard about students complaining about the quality and quantity of the food. He said he's sympathetic and noted that change is always a tough subject for students.

"They're exercising their right to expression and that's a good thing," he said. "But at the same time the regulations are designed to help health long term."

A state Department of Public Health report released last year outlined several startling high-school health trends. The ratio of overweight students to normal-weight students was one out of five, including one out of every 10 being classified as obese. About one out five students drank at least one can or glass of soda per day, while nearly nine out of 10 ate less than the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables per day.

The new state nutrition regulations introduced this fall includes limiting juice sizes to no larger than 4 ounces and milk no larger than 8 ounces. New federal standards mean milk must be either fat-free or 1 percent.

On Fridays, Marshall Middle School students are treated to a pizza lunch, but the crust must be of whole grain.

Angela and Alicia are not the first students in America to mount a campaign against the new rules. Students at a Kansas high school produced a YouTube video titled, "We Are Hungry," which shows classmates pretending to faint at school as a way to argue against the smaller portions. It was uploaded on Sept. 17. As of this week, it had received more than 1 million hits.

The video is described as a "parody on the national school lunch policy mandated by the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010."

After the video went viral, the publisher added a clarification to point out students are "excited about being offered healthy fruits and vegetables" but "feel the protein and carbohydrate limitations are not enough fuel for our average very active student."

Schools in other states have witnessed organized boycotts, such as the Parsippany, N.J., Facebook group calling for students to coordinate on a series of brown-bagged lunch Fridays. Their efforts attracted attention from local news outlets, including the New York Times.

As for the students at Marshall Middle School who signed the petition, it's doubtful that their efforts will affect national and state policy, Piwowar said during Thursday's conversation.

"But if this shows them how people are able to get involved, then I think it can be turned into a learning experience," he added.

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